Tembo the Badass Elephant Lives up to his Name

I never expected SEGA’s next platformer would star a rampaging elephant parody of Rambo. Yet here I am, dashing and spinning around in a game from the makers of Pokemon and Sonic the Hedgehog. Tembo the Badass Elephant is developer Game Freak’s throwback, drawing heavy inspiration from 16-bit mascot platformers. “Tembo is an Asian elephant whose best friend is a military general,” developer James Turner told IGN when the game was announced a few months back. It’s all a bunch of nonsense and I want more of it.

Wasting no time, I blast through a quick tutorial providing the rundown on how to maneuver a special forces-trained elephant. Tembo’s actions are immediately recognizable to me as he performs his best imitation of Sonic the Hedgehog, jumping, dashing, and spinning his way around zones. In addition to the Sonic-like running and jumping, Tembo can uppercut, slide kick, and even use his trunk to put out fires with a reserve of water.

HRRAANHH! Tembo lets loose a thunderous roar emphasized by zany comic book-style lettering as he’s dropped into the first stage. The goal from the outset is clear, obliterate the invading army PHANTOM and save what’s left of Shell City. Tembo’s abilities and the stage designs are the most obvious inspirations, right down to Sonic’s mechanical bosses and barrel launching from Donkey Kong Country. There’s even a little Resogun influence as Tembo rescues trapped civilians, literally carrying them on his back to safety. Rather than be penalized for missing them, players are rewarded for seeking the civilians out in harder to access areas at the end of each stage.

I powered through the first zone without any difficulty. Deaths are few and far between in Shell City. PHANTOM just doesn’t have enough firepower to stop Tembo. Even if I somehow managed to die, collectible peanuts—Tembo the Badass Elephant’s version of rings from Sonic—are spread all over each stage. Score enough and they grant extra lives. Four stages in and I meet Shell City’s first boss, a mechanical dragon-tank monstrosity on a platform above a fiery pit. I assumed this would be a worthy first challenge. I was wrong. It took me all of 41 seconds to bulldoze this thing into the pit. It was an uninspiring boss fight to say the least.

The game’s difficulty does scale noticeably as I bust my way out of the city into Zone 2, the Greenville Peaks on the way to a PHANTOM base. The design is more open in these stages and platforming combined with enemy placement becomes more of an issue. In Shell City, I could run with reckless abandon. I have to be far more concerned with Greenville Peaks’ pitfalls, temporary platforms, and more advanced enemies, reducing the battering ram to a more methodical elephant.

I wouldn’t mind the change in pace so much if Tembo’s primary abilities weren’t all set to one button. Tembo may be fast and acrobatic, but misjudging whether I was completely grounded on a platform before attempting a dash jump was extremely frustrating. Having a separate button for spin attacks would have curbed the issue altogether. Mistakes piled up and lives dwindled as I spun out of control into pits and laser traps.

The Greenville zone ended with me scavenging stages for enough kills to unlock the hornet boss in Greenville Peaks. My frustrations with certain levels were exacerbated by the fact I had to repeat them over and over, looking for hidden enemies to kill in order to squeak out the last 100 or so to unlock the boss. That fight lasted about five times as long as the previous but it still proved to be too easy once the pattern was sorted out.

If there were ever a game I want to live up to its title, Tembo the Badass Elephant is the one. It starts out on the right foot by introducing players to its over-the-top comic book stylization and destruction. The difficulty fluctuates as it transitions into a more traditional platformer but I’m sold on the idea of using a weaponized badass elephant to rain destruction down on my enemies. SEGA and Game Freak may have struck peanut butter gold in the quest to find a sufficient mascot platformer replacement for the supersonic hedgehog.

Michael Martin is a contributor to IGN, and he has a memory like an elephant. Test him out on Twitter at @Bizarro_Mike.